Blame our faulty brains. Luckily, there are ways to get out of the most common mental traps.
Until there’s a safe and widespread vaccine rollout, the greatest weapons we have against the pandemic are the decisions we make every day. The bad news about this is that humans are notoriously lousy decision-makers.
Why, though? Blame our faulty brains: All of us possess cognitive biases that make it…
Data rink ratio| noun| day-ta • ink • ray-shio
- : refers to the ratio between the amount of ink used to represent data elements and the amount of ink used to represent non-data elements.
- : it can be used as a measurement technique to judge whether space is being used efficiently. …
Display overlap| noun| dis-play • over-lap
- : a design technique to increase visual momentum that involves the use of supplemental viewing context to make the presented information easier to integrate and understand.
- : the supplemental viewing context could relate in any way to presented information be it physical contiguity or functional similarity. For example, in a…
Long shot| noun| law-ung • shaw-t
- : a technique to increase visual momentum that involves organizing lower-level interface elements into a coherent relationship that makes structural relationships apparent.
- : these relationships must be displayed in the context of the most important user tasks.
- : a simple example of a long shot technique would be a cartographer…
Fixed format data replacement| noun| fi-xed • for-mat • date-aa • ri-place-ment
- : refers to a design technique used to increase visual momentum, which allows users to change the information displayed on the interface without changing the viewing context.
- : could also involve having dedicated and consistent locations for various interface elements such as menus and commands.
- : a simple example of…
Target popout| noun| taar-get • pop-out
- : refers to an effect in visual search tasks wherein the target is so salient that the number of distractors present does not affect the search times.
- : for example, a red target will popout from a field of black-colored distractors.
- : UX designers can use this effect to contextually…
Absolute judgment | noun| ab-su-lyut • judge•ment
- : refers to a task wherein an operator must classify three or more stimuli along a sensory continuum.
- : for example, if an operator is presented with tones that could have either of four frequencies and the operator is asked to classify a given tone as either of the four…
Response criterion| noun| ris-ponse • cry-tee-riyun
- : in signal detection theory, response criterion refers to an operator’s bias towards perceiving a target signal from the background noise.
- : for example, a baggage handler at an airport scanning bags for potential threats will be biased towards flagging a bag as a potential threat even if it turns…
Calibration curve| noun| cali-bray-shun • curv
- : in the context of automation, refers to the relationship between automation reliability and operator trust in automation.
- : ideally, we would want trust in automation to covary with automation reliability such that operators have greater trust in more reliable automation.
- : in reality, trust is not as perfectly calibrated…
